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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lars Frehse" data-source="post: 1108461" data-attributes="member: 1674">Back into hell- part 4 of 4Torn slipped in after them and gently closed the heavy trapdoor. They found themselves in a corridor, which had been hewn into the rock, and stairs were leading down into the bowels of the spire. Torches were set in the walls at regular intervals, and the corridor was absolutely silent."I'll go first" Torn whispered to his friends and went down the stairs. After twenty yards, they ended in front of a corridor that lead left and right. Torn looked around and seeing no one, he signalled his friends to come down to him. Following a hunch, they turned right into a long, narrow and cool corridor. Twice they passed stairs leading up, until they saw the corridor taking a left bend.Just then, they heard marching feet coming from that direction. Immediately, they headed back and went up the last stairs that they had passed, praying to the gods that whoever came marching wouldn't be heading into their direction.Torn cowered in the shadows, and to his relief, he saw the patrol, which consisted of a dozen ghouls and two necromancers, walk past their corridor. The friends waited a little longer, and once they were sure that the patrol was gone, they continued their way down the corridor.After the turn, it ended in front of another intersection. In front of them was a heavy metal door, and to the left and right, at the end of small, twenty feet long corridors there were two more metal doors. In front of both of these doors, effectively blocking each corridor, was a vaguely humanoid form. Both looked alike, were slightly taller than an average human, and it looked like they were made from ash.Looking left and right, Niklas said:" I think we should try this door here first. Those two fellows don't look that inviting to me".Torn nodded, but as just he hunkered down to get a good look at the lock in front of him, Trepat nudged him: "Shhh! Don't you hear that?"The halforc stopped and listened, and really, there was the sound of a child crying. The crying stopped, and was substituted by what seemed to be a melancholic elven lullaby."I think it comes from behind that door", Trepat said and pointed down the corridor to their right.Torn pulled out his spiked chain, and turned to Trepat:" All right then. Cover our backs!"They stepped into the corridor, and immediately, the ash-construct in front of them came to life. It stepped forward and punched at Niklas, who felt the supernatural strength of the golem as he had all the air knocked out of him. The monk punched back, but wherever his fist hit his opponents, all they did was pass through lose ash. It seemed as if the thing was able to harden it's limbs when needed, like when it struck with it's fists, but stayed immaterial like ash in the rest of his body, making it nearly impossible to damage it.Seeing that his chain merely pierced through nothing, Torn took Trepat's magical scimitar while Niklas took a beating. Trepat had meanwhile found out that his magic was without effect against the thing. So he boosted the strength of both the halforc and the human, but then Niklas was hit square against the skull, and he crushed to the ground.Now only Torn could effectively fight this soulless and menacing opponent. He went into a rage and swinging the scimitar with both hands, he chopped away at the golem. He was oblivious to the crushed bones and bruised flesh where the construct hit him and then, suddenly, it was over.The golem exploded in a cloud of ashes, and the corridor was silent again. Trepat had already nursed Niklas back to consciousness, and now he urged Torn: "Quick. Tanil knows how much time we have left".Without losing any time, Torn examined the door, and after finding and disarming a trap that would have filled the corridor with poisonous gas, he picked the lock. Fearing a trap, he and his friends readied their weapons and pushed open the heavy iron door.Immediately, they were hit by the foul odours of humanoids who had been locked into a confined space. There were about two dozen elves in there, fearfully crouching in one half of the room, and their filth and excrements was piled up in a corner in the other half of the room. All of them were dirty, starving and shielding their eyes from the weak light of the torches in the corridor."Don't be afraid", Trepat said, stepping into the prison cell, "we are here to help you."One of the women, who was holding a starving child in her arms, looked up: "Trepat? Is that you?"Trepat recognized her right away:" Cymola, yes. I am so glad to see you again".He rushed forward, ignoring the dirt, and embraced his cousin. Soon, other elves stepped forward, and Trepat found that half of the elves who were captured here were his clan mates who he hadn't seen in four decades.They had to keep their reunion short for now, though. Torn interrupted them:" I am sorry to disturb, but we are not safe yet. Are there any spell casters among you?"One elf stepped up: „Yes, I am a wizard, but my spell book had been taken from me. If I would have it, I could cast some polymorph spells to transform me and some others into hippogriffons...""Actually", Torn interrupted, pulling out a tome out of his magical bag of holding" we do have a spellbook with those spells. Do you think you would have enough time to prepare the spells?""I do think so. The patrol had just been here an hour or two ago, and I estimate that they usually come here in once per day. At least I think so- the passage of time is hard to be judged down here. It is definitely worth a try".The elvish wizard settled down to study the book, and after a few hours, the friends lead the prisoners out of the corridor and into the ruin at the edge of the city where they had hidden before. There, Trepat used three scrolls he had gathered over the years to turn three of the elves into hippogriffons. Then, the wizard transformed another elf, Torn, Trepat and himself into hippogriffons, too. Two or three elves mounted each of the griffons, and they flew of into the night.When the sun rose on the next morning, they were just crossing the Broadreach River. On the far bank, several of the Butterfly elves were already awaiting them. The hippogriffons landed, and right away, the weakest elves rolled into the sand of the bank, and the butterflies took care of them. For now, they were safe. At least as safe as one could be in a place like the Hornsaw Forest.Two days later, the wizard had transformed all the griffons back into their original form. They were all resting in a butterfly-camp deep in the woods, and one evening, as the friends were laying on their back, looking up to the stars above, Niklas said:" There is one thing I don't understand. How had we been able to find the elves so easily? That was a big place. It almost feels as if some unseen force had guided us... And I don't like that idea..."</blockquote>

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